Chapter 89
Chapter 89
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 89
Chapter Title: A Heart-to-Heart with Father
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If not for that, could our family have stayed at the main house?
Even if Dad was as strong as could be, Grandfather commanded the Northern Army.
If he'd set his mind to it, kicking our whole family out would have been child's play.
'But Grandfather didn't do that.'
Dad, who had been silent for so long, finally spoke in a voice sunk low and slow.
"You want me to talk to His Excellency?"
"Yeah. Gwampa's Daddy's daddy. When Mawella's upset, she tells Daddy evewything. Daddy should do that too."
Dad slowly started walking at my words.
As he approached me, shaking the blood from his hands, he knelt on one knee and pulled me into a tight hug.
Mother's first death anniversary had passed.
Even Dad's deepest wound must have started to heal just a little by now.
Even if not, Erich, Dietrich, and I were by his side now.
I hugged Dad's neck tight and whispered.
"If Gwampa says mean things, I wike Daddy. I'm on Daddy's side."
"I know."
"Ewi and Ditty will be on Daddy's side too."
Dad, who had been listening quietly, suddenly burst out laughing.
He stood up and lifted me into the air like I was the cutest thing ever, then set me down.
"If my daughter's on my side, what do I care about some duke?"
"Daddy!"
"I'll go have this talk, so head back to your room."
"Okay!"
"Mariella."
Dad, who had been speaking in a playful, light tone, paused for a moment.
He met my eyes steadily, then whispered softly.
"I'm sorry you're so young and already having to say things like this."
I could answer his other words eagerly, but not this one.
Dad's face looked so pained as he said it.
The Northern Duke, Maximilian Kalenberg, gazed steadily at his son standing before him.
Having visited the family grave on the anniversary of his late daughter-in-law's death, he figured Erich's situation must have come up by now.
He'd expected his son to lose his temper, rampage, and come storming after him.
But...
The atmosphere was different from usual.
Ever since Lucy died, his son had always been on edge like a sharpened blade.
Killing intent simmered sporadically in those golden eyes that took after the duke so perfectly, and he never bothered to hide it.
Yet today, Leopoldt was suppressing that rare rage and asked.
"Why did you kill Lucy?"
Leopoldt didn't beat around the bush. Just like his daughter Mariella always did.
"I didn't kill that girl. The heretics did."
The eyes of father and son—so eerily alike—met in the air.
They were too alike, which was why they always clashed.
But not today.
Normally, Leopoldt would have bared his teeth by now, but he kept his passion in check and asked calmly.
"Yes, a heretic's blade took my wife's life. But what was the main house doing before that?"
"..."
"A vicious endemic disease was ravaging the occupied territory. We desperately requested rear support. Medicine—we begged for it, said it was something we could handle easily if we just had the drugs."
As if recalling that time, old hatred began to frost over Leopoldt's eyes.
The heretics' lands were nothing like the territories the Northerners had long pioneered.
Civilization hadn't taken root properly, so diseases long eradicated in the North still lingered.
The barely conquered regions were no different.
"Did you deliberately delay support to get Lucy killed?"
Thanks to the emperor's innovative policies, she'd been exceptionally inducted into the Imperial Knights—otherwise, she'd have wasted her life in some border garrison as a mere commoner girl.
A heaven-forsaken orphan without even family.
When he'd come to the duke's house, holding his wife's hand to beg for permission to marry, how furious the duke had been...
It was around then that he'd been stripped of even the tenuous direct-line rights he'd clung to after abandoning his heir position and leaving the main house.
After defying fierce opposition to marry anyway, even his born grandchildren had been ignored.
Until he'd come crawling on his knees to beg for Erich's treatment, the duke had treated Leopoldt and his wife and children as if they didn't exist.
"I'm asking if you sent your unacceptable commoner daughter-in-law to her death."
That was why he couldn't shake the doubt.
Rear support had been delayed endlessly, only arriving when the occupation's desperate pleas had turned to outright begging.
Not enough medicine even for the knights, let alone the locals—and before its effects could spread, the heretics' main force had descended.
The knights left behind, wracked by the endemic fever, hadn't even the strength to wield their swords; they'd died tearing into the enemy with their teeth.
'If support had come just a little sooner...'
Hypotheticals branched into dozens of paths.
If more medicine had arrived. If Lucy had tended to herself before the other knights.
Or if he'd never taken her to the rear to begin with.
If he'd stayed behind and died instead...
He knew nothing could be undone now.
The duke gazed for a moment at his son's face, still twisted in agony.
At the face that needed someone to blame to endure the pain. Slowly, the duke spoke.
"I planned to grant her the Rommel Earldom upon your victorious return."
The Rommel Earldom was a beautiful, prosperous territory not far from Kalena, the heart of the duchy.
It was the only place in the North with an ice-free port even in winter.
A land traditionally given to the duke's heir, leveraging its geographic advantages.
The eldest son, raised from birth as the Northern Duke's successor, couldn't be ignorant of its symbolism.
Seeing Leopoldt's face harden, the duke added an explanation.
"Don't misunderstand—there were no other intentions. I simply thought Rommel's mild climate would be good for raising your frail Erich."
"What does that...?"
"All three of your children are my grandchildren. Did you think I'd let the mother of the Kalenberg duke's grandchildren live as a commoner forever?"
Even if it was his son who'd run off on his own long ago and forced an unacceptable marriage, he was still his son.
That son's wife was still his daughter-in-law.
Long-hidden anguish surfaced on the duke's face.
Leopoldt ground his teeth as he watched those raw emotions laid bare.
"I sent you out with orders to return victorious."
Those who earned military merit deserved fitting rewards.
A knight victorious against heretics had ample qualification for a title, common orphan or not.
No one could object.
Thus, with a legitimate earldom, he could ensure his grandchildren lived peacefully on rich lands.
He hadn't imagined Lucy dying.
War demanded lives, but considering Leopoldt's temperament, he'd believed his son would protect Lucy even at the cost of his own life.
"Did you think I'd ever try to kill my own daughter-in-law?"
The duke's eyes, showing his sincerity for the first time, were deeply creased.
The guilt he'd harbored so long—that he'd ultimately caused his daughter-in-law's death—flickered there.
Leopoldt stood silently before his father's aged face, engulfed in crushing pain.
It felt like the iron clang of the hatred that had sustained him since his wife's death shattering.
Once he'd bared his true heart once, doing it again wasn't hard.
"If I despised commoner blood so much, would I have worked that hard to save Erich?"
A rare congenital condition with few living examples.
And those who had it tended to die young, their time cut short.
Despite those harsh odds, the duke's tenacity had found a cure.
Hundreds of priests had pooled their knowledge in research.
He'd poured out sums equal to years of the North's budget like water.
The result: if Erich survived this final intensive treatment period, he could live like anyone else.
"You're my child too. Do you think I'd be that cruel to my own flesh and blood...?"
Leopoldt looked at his father—not as duke, but as man.